So, 17 months after local government reformer Lee Johnson prepared a massive report on problems in the Lake County Employee Services Dept., the County Auditor finally issued a 43 page audit report with 62 Findings, and included the responses from the County officials.
You can find our initial August 18, 2008 posting about this issue and Lee Johnson's research HERE.
The link to the recent audit report is further down in this report.
Basically, Johnson used public records requests and found all sorts of questionable work practices related to hiring, firing, promotions and demotions in County operations. Based upon my experience as an internal audit manager in several large firms, a professional HR manager would never have condoned such practices. However, some issues could also have been due to political interference, which we will never know.
During the lapsed time between Johnson's analysis and the issuance of the audit report:
- one employee filed a discrimination lawsuit and settled for $50,000
- the County Manager, Cindy Hall, who originally ignored Johnson's research and tried to bury it, has been fired.
- the County Manager in charge of the Employee Services Dept. "left" the County after Hall was fired.
- the Manager in charge of the employee who won the lawsuit was demoted.
- The County Auditor, Dennis Grey, left the County about 6 weeks ago, but he and his staff did a great job on this audit - they were delayed in completing the audit due to scheduling and slow cooperation from the County offices and because the County Clerk would not authorize quick action until a "request" was received from the County Manager.
However, thanks to County Clerk Neal Kelly for moving the audit forward after Grey left the County, and issuing it today.
Unfortunately, the County Clerk, who supervises the County Auditor, does not feel he has authority to initiate audits even with significant documentation, indicated by the following quote from the report's cover letter:
"The presenting resident at the August 19, 2008 BCC meeting later met with the Clerk of the Courts and presented the same information. The resident further stated that he and those working with him represented a group of persons which includes former and current county personnel. He requested the Clerk’s Internal Audit Department perform an internal audit of the County’s Employee Services Office. The Clerk explained that the Clerk’s office had an ongoing good relationship with the County Manager and the Board of County Commissioners and that if they determined that an internal audit was needed, they would be the ones who would initiate Internal Audit services. The Clerk further stated that his office would present the topic for potential inclusion in the next fiscal year’s annual audit plan."
The above statement indicates a significant weakness in the oversight of Lake County operations. An auditor should have a "Charter" that gives him complete authority to initiate audits of significant issues without having to 1) ask for permission of the auditee and 2) not have to wait to schedule it in a future "audit plan". In my 18 years experience as an Internal Audit Manager, we never delayed reviews of any significant, documented operational issues like this, and it was not uncommon to fly out to a location within a week to investigate much smaller issues than the ones discussed in this report. Perhaps this is evidence that Lake County needs a separate Inspector General like other Florida Counties have recently implemented.
And, the Court Clerk will not publish audit reports on their website. Thus if Lee Johnson and I were not monitoring this, the public would probably never know of the audit report, because the local newspapers do not monitor them. And if Lee Johnson had not made public presentations on the issue at the Board meetings, the audit might never have taken place.
Here is the County Audit Report - I will add my comments below by Thursday, Feb 4 after I read it.
Unlike many professional internal audit reports I have seen, there is no executive summary listing the major findings, so you have to read all 60+ findings to identify which are the important issues and the relevance of the responses.
Here is the attached audit report:
Download ES QIP Internal Audit Final Report with Management Response FINAL
My comments - being revised in real time, so until I change this line to say "final", it will be subject to change :
My Overall Summary of Issues and the Report
I will create this section last after my review.
Draft Issues so far:
Here are some key quotes buried in the audit report:
- "the current director may lack formalized, human resources educational requirements as stated in the job description under which the director was hired..." (This could explain some of the findings) (pg 10)
- "As previously found in other internal audits, other Board departments place little emphasis on identifying or measuring key performance measures. ES is no different. ES is aware of their central job duties and the function of ES within the county structure. However, most information is collected informally, retained informally by managers, and problems are identified as they arise or are discovered in performing managerial oversight of their areas of responsibility. Little time is spent in looking at trends or capturing key data. ES appears to be more reactive than proactive in their approach to managerial leadership and problem identification and solving." (Note: I found this after writing some similar observations of my own.) (pg 10)
- "ES, though responsible for leading the charge in quality improvement, lacks direction in looking at continuous improvement within ES functions." (pg 10)
More to be posted here tomorrow, Thursday.vj
